


It's Not The Waking (It's The Rising)

by Her_Madjesty



Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [4]
Category: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Bonding Through Extreme Circumstances, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Menstruation mention, Minor Character Deaths, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27963797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: On the morning of her second wedding, Hero rises from the dead.She’s not alone.
Relationships: Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)
Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037376
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	It's Not The Waking (It's The Rising)

**Author's Note:**

> On the fourth day of Christmas, a harried writer gave to thee...zombies!
> 
> I hate Tuesdays; I am wildly busy, but I wanted to get this up and out before I had to go run digital D&D. I hope you enjoy this incredibly strange take! I'll see you all on the 10th (hopefully with something a little more cheerful than this and the soldier piece).

I

On the morning of her second wedding, Hero rises from the dead.

She’s not alone.

As the bridal party comes together from all corners of the villa, the rest of the island sees a waking of its own. By the time the sun has started to peek up from above the horizon, strange shapes can be seen wandering on the shore – lurching, half-made figures that move towards Messina’s merchant quarter.

Hero and her ladies dress in black.

Don Pedro’s soldiers escort an unusually quiet – almost shaken – Don John back onto the villa’s premises.

The men gather together at a half-destroyed altar, deliberating ignoring the decorations and ornamentation that Claudio left in his wake.

There is clanging at the front gate. Lord Leonato’s guards move to quell what they assume to be dissatisfied rabble or some allies of Don John’s – but Hero, consumed with her own churning feelings, does not take time out of her preparations to see what happens. Instead, she reaches out and clutches Beatrice’s hand with her own, desperate for some manner of comforting human contact.

Beatrice pulls her cousin in for a hug. Hero tries not to dampen Beatrice’s dress with her tears – happy or sad, even she cannot tell – as her cousin hums a familiar tune under her breath.

Too soon, they must make their way to the courtyard. The cousins only part when Antonio comes to take Hero’s arm in his own.

(The front gates burst open, overrun.)

A troop of players strikes up in the corner, their tune guiding Hero’s feet down the aisle. Behind her, she feels Beatrice, her constant guardian; at her side, her uncle puffs his chest up proud, like a lion. At the end of the lane there is Claudio, haloed by the morning sun as though baptized by it.

In the distance, there is screaming.

Hero fumbles, not halfway to her would-be husband. Her grip on her uncle’s arm tightens, and she glances over her shoulder –

And what approaches, at first, could be mistaken for a happy mob.

But then the soldiers are drawing their swords.

Beatrice’s hand is on her arm in an instant, even as Antonio shoves her behind him. He is a broad man, a happy man, but Hero sees the lion in him wake properly as he – and her father, up at the altar – roar for the prince and his people to protect the villa as best they are able.

(No one will identify this mob as failed Lazaruses for another several days. Doctors will try to study this strange illness and come away dead or infected with it. Only when the breathing have retreated onto the sea or into the mountains, where the weather is too cold for the creatures to stand, will anyone start to refer to their hunters as the living dead.)

Claudio and Benedick alike have both run forward towards the crowd before Hero has time to lift her veil. Beatrice cries out only to cover her mouth a second later, terrified, Hero thinks, of drawing the mob’s attention.

The first wave of men is overrun in almost an instant. No one knows how to respond to these puppeted bodies, which lose limbs but keep pushing forward with the intent to bite and feast, if not kill.

Hero scrambles backwards as Claudio falls, his head bashed against the cobblestone of her father’s courtyard. Beatrice loses her grip on her cousin as Benedick disappears into the crowd, torn, it seems, between her two dearest loves.

A pack of the creatures turn towards the women. They do not hesitate. Like dogs, they bound forward on four legs, moving at full speed.

Hero brings her hands up in front of her face, unable to pull herself from the ground.

She hears Beatrice’s scream turn into a grunt, and then into a litany of swears.

She hears the kiss of steel against half-made skin.

When she peeks through her fingers, there’s an unfamiliar body in front of hers. He brings the hilt of his sword down on the creature’s head even as it reaches between his legs towards her.

There are chains around his wrist.

Hero throws back her veil in time to see Don John turn and look down at her, all anger and terror. A hint of confusion bleeds into his face as he looks at her, but it’s quick to fall apart as another wave of the creatures rushes forward.

Hero cannot keep track of how many he bats aside. They retreat together, though, with his sword proving the one barrier between them and some manner of death.

Too late, she realizes she has lost track of Beatrice – her father –

Everyone.

She and Don John are pushed to the thicket at the villa’s border. Reinforcements from further down the island appear and throw themselves at the ever-growing mob. In the moment of relief they have, Hero sees Don John turn – and his sword is suddenly beneath her chin.

“Are you one of them?” he demands, leaning in.

Hero, tears streaking down her cheeks, shakes her head. “Please – no, I promise I’m not!”

“Then how are you back from the dead?”

Were the situation anything but what it was, Hero thinks she might laugh. As it stands, she brings a hand up to wipe a stray tear from her cheek. “It was a false death,” she tells the man who wronged her – the man who undoubtedly just saved her life. “We meant to save my reputation with it.”

Across the field, a trumpet sounds. Hero’s attention is stolen by a standard bearer in the midst of her father’s fields, sounding the call for retreat.

Don John’s sword disappears from beneath her chin. Hero looks back at him only to see him offering her a hand.

“We need to run,” he tells her, his voice fallen back to the same clipped tone he’d used upon his arrival. “Know this, lady: I protect you because I owe you a debt.” A snarl sounds to their left. Hero gasps as Don John cuts down a leaping member of the undead without looking. All the while, he holds her gaze.

(She will never quite know the right moment to pursue that line of thought, in the days that come, but in the moment, his meaning is all too clear. He has killed her once. He will not see her dead again.)

Their hands are still tight against one another’s, the warmth lost between two sets of gloves.

For a breath – maybe less, even with his word at hand – Hero considers leaving him.

The trumpet sounds again.

Don John breaks her gaze and tugs at her wrist.

Lost, Hero can do nothing but follow.

II

In the months that follow the first attack, other survivals will ask how it is, precisely, that they managed their escape from Messina.

Hero will tell one story.

Don John will tell another.

In Hero’s story, they run from the villa to the harbor as fast as their feet can carry them. No soldier dares to stop them, and Don John’s hand is tight on her wrist. Together, they manage to board one of the fisherman’s ships that has yet to leave the harbor. Hero gives the captain her engagement ring while Don John provides his support hauling the anchor and helping the crew get the rest of them out to sea. Once aboard, they will spend upwards of a week surviving off of what the fishermen can catch before they’re forced to make port on Sardegna, near Cagliari.

In Don John’s story, they escape while his half-brother’s men throw themselves at an enemy they do not understand. The fishermen accept Hero’s bribe and his sword arm with wary looks at the both of them – all of them had heard of Hero’s death and Don John’s role in it, and to see the two of them traveling together…

Well.

It raised suspicions.

He and Hero removed themselves from the fishermen’s company as soon as possible, both for reasons of expediency and because, while Hero had considered staying behind, there were too many rumors about her being one of the undead, herself (or, worse, as false as he once painted her).

So they had taken to land together.

And for some reason, they have yet to part.

They linger in Cagliari while the whole of Sicily goes under. News comes in slowly, but more and more fishermen go to those waters and fail to come back, or come back only for their ships to sink in their ports of call, the last of the living men succumbing to the spreading disease.

By the time that first month comes to an end, Hero feels she has learned more than she had in all of the years she spent under her father’s tutelage.

For starters:

She knew how to start a fire in theory before, but she puts the matter to practice when Don John secures them an abandoned fisherman’s cabin their first night on shore. She has long abandoned her wedding veil and jewels, but her dress is still the same – soaked in salt and sweat. She rips off the bottom to serve as kindling, then takes Don John’s flint and tinder in shaking hands.

He watches her work, alternating his gaze between their woodpile and the door.

“You’ll need to know this,” he tells her, his tone unrelenting even after she’s bruised her palms for her efforts. “I won’t be with you forever.”

That same evening, when Don John isn’t looking, she learns how to steal. She waits until his eyes have slipped shut (and he snores, but quietly), then shimmies out of her top two layers until she is down to her shift. She makes her way out to a washing woman’s clothesline and takes only a tunic when she goes, but it is something – something that isn’t black and heavy and too full of memories.

Don John does not chide her when he wakes, a mere hour later. Instead, he blinks at her, long and slow in the dying light of their fire, before he returns to his post. Hero spends what few hours she can stand to be awake ripping her once-wedding gown into medical bandages to use if either of them ever find themselves injured. By the time she collapses, even the stars have succumbed to the darkness outside.

(She wakes with an officer’s coat draped over her, but neither of them talk about it.)

A few days later, they make their way to one of the rivers together, where Don John teaches her how to fish. Hero sits beside him while the sun beats down on their backs and stares out at the strings of fabric they’ve used to craft their lines.

She manages to keep from burning the fish that they catch in the evening. It’s the first time she thinks she’s seen Don John smile since the whole ordeal began.

The month passes with lessons and evenings that are more quiet than they are speaking. Don John, she finds, does not speak to fill the silence. There are entire days when they will exchange one to two sentence between themselves, at the most. But the air between them grows...comfortable, for lack of a better term.

And despite everything he said when they fled Messina, Don John does not leave her to her own devices. They take watch in the evening in shifts; they share their meals and their supplies and their silence, rich with its own meaning between them.

III

The reality of their situation hits her when she least expects it.

It’s midday. On a whim, she made her excuses in their cabin and made her way to the nearest port, where she wanders barefoot and smiling at fishermen’s wives and their children. A pang of longing pierces her heart, looking at all of them. The pang festers as she walks – though, after a breath or two, she realizes that the grief is not her own.

That is not to say that Hero had gone her adult life without wanting to bring a daughter up on her knee. But she comes to a stop in the near middle of the street, staring at these families – and knows in her heart what it is she is missing.

Beatrice will never have this.

Benedick will never have this.

She will never have a chance to stand with them as they marry. She will never dance with them again, drink with them again, tease them again. She will never have the chance to watch a child with Beatrice’s hair and Benedick’s charm stand on tottering legs in the world. She will never kiss those bruised knees or sneak that child treats before they go to bed.

A hand brushes hers. Hero reels backwards only to find one of those browsing mothers looking at her, concern written all across her face.

Only then does Hero realize that there are tears on her cheeks; that she is hyperventilating in the middle of this busy street.

“Come along, dear one,” says the mother, gently tugging Hero along. Hero, hapless, goes with her and settles in the dirt of a quiet alley. She lets this nameless mother stroke her hair as she sobs, burying her face in her hands.

No Beatrice. No Benedick. Never again seeing her father or her uncle arguing in the sunlight of an early morning.

Never seeing her home again.

She is choked with grief, barely able to see her arms in front of her face as she tries to bury her tears. All the while, this mother rubs her back and whispers comfort in a dialect Hero only half-recognizes.

(She does not see the mother shoo one of her children in the direction of the woods; does not see the child run off.)

By the time Hero is out of tears, her throat feels as though it has shriveled to death. She takes the handkerchief the mother offers her and tries to clear off her face, but there is no getting rid of her flushed nose and cheeks. Instead, she leans into this stranger’s shoulder and tries to get her breathing back under control.

It feels like staring into a void, this grief.

“I know, dear one,’ says the woman in her ear. Hero looks up and, for a moment, wonders if she has said something aloud. But the mother only shakes her head and wraps a comforting arm around Hero’s shoulders.

“Grief comes in waves,” says the mother, looking out onto the street. Hero follows her gaze – and there is one of the children she saw earlier, gathered in a pack with some of the others from the village.

“My sister passed five years ago,” continues the mother, one hand still rubbing comforting circles into Hero’s shoulders. “And I imagine the days to come will only try us further. I can only thank God now that she is not alive to hear of the rumors from the south.”

Hero hiccups in a failed attempt to respond and is only shushed for her efforts.

The two women sit in the dirt for far longer than they should – long after Hero manages to level out her breathing. In the street, the children find a leather ball and kick it back and forth, screaming with joy as they go.

(And in the back of her mind, Hero cannot help but wonder how many of them will suffer if the disease of the undead comes to this island; cannot help but imagine the orphans that the coming times will leave in its wake.)

Abruptly, the vision of the children is obscured by two shadows. Hero all but curls back into her unnamed stranger as first a child, then Don John, step forward.

The woman behind Hero gives her shoulders a squeeze, then rises, helping her stand as she goes. Her child comes and tucks himself behind his mother’s legs.

Hero looks at Don John. His face is obscured by the darkness of the alley, but there is an undeniable hint of panic in those black eyes.

The stranger passes Hero over to him, but not before pressing a kiss to her temple. “Take care of her,” she orders Don John before stepping back out into the light. “She’s had a terrible fright.”

Tentative hands come up to hold her. Hero, wrung out and with mud on her dress, doesn’t think before collapsing into Don John’s chest.

By the time the mother and her children have reunited in the street, Don John’s arms have come all the way around her. He holds her like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, like he’s never been embraced before. Hero takes the comfort she can and tries, desperately, to find the words to explain her grief.

In the end, nothing but silence passes between them.

After what feels like an eternity, Hero straightens. Don John lets go of her almost immediately and takes a step back. For a moment, the man who caused her so much grief looks like nothing more than a boy, standing awkwardly with his back to the sun.

Hero resists the urge to duck her head and flush, both from embarrassment and from the abrupt, secret wish that he take her in his arms once again.

Eventually, Don John clears his throat. He holds out his arm to her and fixes his gaze on the wall behind her head.

Despite her heavy heart, Hero feels herself start to smile. She slips her arm into his and takes comfort in the warmth of him, in spite of the heat bearing down on the both of them.

He doesn’t ask her about it – doesn’t even tell her what the child said to get him running to her as quickly as he did. But come nighttime, he does not leave her alone in the cabin.

When the morning light streams through their cabin’s window, Hero opens her eyes and finds their hands a mere inch from one another. She steels herself against the pain in her chest and focuses on the dirt beneath his fingernails; on the sword that he keeps close to his side; on the rise and fall of his chest as he dreams – of what, she knows not.

IV

At the end of that first quiet month away from Sicily, the world takes another turn. A ship comes in from the mainland with news.

The virus has spread.

Estates are collapsing. The country, already fractured between its princes and kings, is falling into shambles.

(The messenger does not know it, but one of his own men is obscuring a bite wound. Within a night, the whole of the ship finds themselves infected – as do one or two of the islanders.)

Hero is washing their scant few clothes in the river when Don John comes running to their borrowed cabin in the woods. She is stripped down past her shift and all but throws herself underwater as he comes tearing through the brush. He has a pair of trousers and a shirt that she may or may have not stolen; he never asked, and she never told.

“We need to go,” he barks, his voice rough from disuse. Hero, fighting to cover herself, takes only a second to register the fear in his eyes (though she knows he would deny it, were she ever to bring it up.)

“They’re here?” she cries, only to cover her mouth with her hand. Her voice is too loud; it echoes through the woods around them. Don John whirls immediately, a hand reaching for the sword he keeps always at his belt. Hero freezes in the water, keen ears listening for any rustling.

Seconds pass. Her heart is thundering in her ears.

Finally, Don John looks back at her and nods. “Get your things,” he says – and only then seems to register her state. He doesn’t stare – but then again, they have spent the past month in close proximity with one another. She has seen him in various states of undress, and she long abandoned most of the outer layers that she would wear as the daughter of an estate holder.

(For a good week, she went and made a separate camp for herself in the woods, embarrassment coursing through her veins. Don John had followed her, then. It’d been one of the first days they’d spoken more than a few words to one another – and he’d ranted at her, told her that he’d grown up alongside scores of women and that this wasn’t a surprise, nor was he a wet-behind-the-ears boy.

“You will be safer in the cabin,” he’d told her, motioning violently back in the direction of their little home. “And I will not have my debt’s repayment snuffed because of some antiquated embarrassment you may feel it appropriate to suffer.”

He’d been flushed as he spoke – but then again, so had Hero. She’s gathered her things almost begrudgingly before letting him usher her back to the little haven.)

But to the point:

Don John looks away from her, to give her a semblance of privacy as she stumbles out of the river. He stays between her and the rest of the wood as they make their way back to the cabin, while plumes of smoke start to rise in the distance.

Hero manages to throw on a dry shift only once they reach the privacy of their borrowed home – and despite the staccato beat of her heart, she cannot help but notice that Don John’s ears have turned pink.

It is not the time, however, to comment.

“Where should we go?” she asks as they leave the cabin behind. She longs, in her own way, for some manner of weapon; Don John may have sheathed his sword for the moment, but there is no denying that it is too often the only thing that stands between the two of them and some kind of undeath.

Don John glances back – and then, something snaps in the distance.

On instinct, Hero has her hands wrapped in the fabric of his coat. She pulls him to a stop and hauls him behind one of the nearest trees. There is fury and confusion in his brow, but Hero’s eyes are wide as she twists, daring to peek into the distance behind them.

There is something following them through the forest. It snuffles, then groans – and Don John’s hand goes to Hero’s waist.

The two of them exchange glances. With the greatest of care – too great, Hero thinks, for this specific moment – Don John removes her fingers from his arm. He motions for her to stay put, his hand hesitating as he moves her back against the tree.

Hero watches him go, her heart pounding in her chest.

She hears him dispatch of the undead. She keeps both of her hands pressed against her mouth as the forest echoes with the sound of steel against rotting flesh. Only when his steady footsteps come her way again and his hand touches her arm does she realizes that she’s closed her eyes.

His expression, when he looks at her, is almost sad.

“We’ll find a boat,” he tells her, reaching out to take her wrist. “Once we’re at sea, we’ll make a plan.”

A wry look comes over his face as they start to run again, though Hero for the life of her can’t understand why. The next time he speaks, though, it becomes a little clearer.

“Where did you want to travel to when you were a child, lady?” he asks, leading her in a near dance between the saplings and their parent trees. “It seems we have our breadth of options, so long as you don’t want to go home.”

The comment soothes just as much as it stabs – and despite herself, Hero laughs. The laughter turns to a sob not a second later, and then she is forcing herself into silence, her shoulders shaking.

Don John never lets go of her wrist. He doesn’t look at her. Instead, Hero is left to study his face as they make for the other side of the island, tracing out the pain and the amusement and the old, old exhaustion she can see in the tightness of his jaw.

V

They escape Sardegna on a boat full of refugees, barely ahead of the hoard that comes their way. Hero looks back from a mere half-mile off shore and can see those sickly bodies ripping themselves from the depths of the forest only to stumble in the sand.

She thinks longingly on that tired cabin and can only imagine what’s become of it; of the kind mothers and the children no longer playing in the streets.

There’s smoke coming up from the other side of the island.

The ship’s captain is a trader she’d met in port on one of the occasions she’d gone. He seems more familiar with Don John than her, though, what with the two of them standing next to one another and pouring over a map from the captain’s quarters.

Hero considers going to them, but busies herself with the other refugees, instead. This is her second time losing a home, where it is their first.

So she comforts the children who don’t understand what’s happening, distracting them so their parents can mourn and weep. She asks after any injuries and tends to one woman’s sprained ankle as best as she is able. The last of the rags from her long-abandoned wedding gown go to make a splint. By the time she’s got the children playing some manner of guessing game in the middle of the main deck, one of the crewmen on board has managed to scrape together a dinner out of fruit that the trader meant to sell. The captain’s brow doesn’t even crease as the refugees pass different cuts around, slowly settling from their panic.

It is a relief, Hero finds, to have something to do in this crisis. The longer she looks at the faces of the children and their families, the less she has to think about Beatrice; about the cabin she can never go back to; about the villa she may never call home again.

And then, there is Don John at her elbow. She turns and finds herself almost smiling at the sight of him, some dark knot in her chest easing. To her surprise, his face seems to smooth out at the sight of her, the tired lines around his eyes losing some of their depth.

“There are three islands to the west,” he tells her. “The captain intends to deposit us there and to stay put for the winter. With any luck, this plague will consume itself in the coldest months of the year.”

He sounds – hopeful, in his own way. Hero tells him so just to see him raise an awkward hand to the back of his neck.

He fidgets with something in his pocket, though it is growing dark enough that she doesn’t entirely notice.

Across the ship, one of the mothers starts to sing. It’s a song the children recognize at once, and within a moment, that lone voice is joined by near a dozen. Hero turns, her smile growing, relief rushing to her head like alcohol after a day of fasting. Don John hovers at her side, his brow knitting back into that perpetual stern confusion, but the corners of his eyes are still soft – still focused on her.

*

(Come morning, when everyone but the crew and a few of the children are still asleep, he will quietly wake her in the spot they’ve carved out for themselves on the floor. Too close together, he will take a ring from his pocket. It’s one of his own, or so he will say; one of the few things in the world he has to his name. They haven’t yet had problems, the both of them being unmarried and yet traveling together, but it will be...safer, he’ll insist. If they’re going to stay together.

And Hero will look at him. In that early morning light, there will be only echoes of the man who once would have turned her into a tool for his revenge. In his place there will be the man who stood between her and the darkness of the past month and odd weeks with nothing but a sword and his stubborn pride. There will be the man who looks away when she needs a moment to herself but who never – no matter how often he insists he should – leaves her side.

And so Hero will hold out her hand to him, just to see his eyes go wide. She’ll make him slip the ring on her finger himself. Only once it’s settled, silver against her skin, will she wiggle forward and press a shy kiss to the corner of his mouth.)

VI

The thing about the end of the world is that it doesn’t really end. No matter what happens, the sun keeps coming up over the horizon in the morning. The waves keep crashing against the shore. Life finds a way to carry on.

They winter in Mahon, one of the last ships to make it into port before the docks close up. The men more familiar with war make themselves at home in the fort, and warning shots make it clear to passing traders that no business is welcome on the island.

The harvest comes in. It is lean, but it is enough. The only residents who die in the winter are those who are old or sick with illnesses from which many knew they would not recover.

Towards the solstice, Don John hangs his sword up by the front door. Hero comes home from a day sweeping floors and teaching lessons to the local children to find him dozing, as if by accident, on the floor near to their fire.

They will not be able to furnish their little home for several more months. Even then, they will borrow castoffs from the parents of the children Hero teaches. But when Don John wakes, he will take Hero’s hand and press it to his chest – and Hero will let him.

When winter turns to spring turns to summer, they will quietly mourn the dead together. But in the dead of winter, Don John will press his face into Hero’s curls, and she will clutch his hands – and it’s enough, more than enough to cushion the weight of the weary world around them.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! If you're looking for something similar to this but involving moms instead of Shakespearan characters, then I cannot recommend ["Badass Moms of the Zombie Apocalypse"](https://uncannymagazine.com/article/badass-moms-in-the-zombie-apocalypse/) heartily enough. It's a short story, entirely free to read online, that deals with a bunch of the complexities of life after things go topsy-turvy.
> 
> Edit: I was admittedly super-rushed when I linked that story, but I was also trying to find a non-spoiler-y way to say: "Y'all, it's a bit gory and dark and it's got some horror elements but IT'S SUCH A GOOD STORY (that I would dare never put my own work on the same level as, because that got legit published)." I'm only adding this edited comment now because I'm feeling as though "topsy-turvy" _really_ does not appropriately encapsulate everything that happens in that piece. Read with caution, and your mileage may vary.
> 
> For now, see you on the 10th!


End file.
